INDIO - It wasn't yet 1:30 p.m. on Saturday in the Sahara Tent, but 16-year-old Niall Bauer had already met up with friends on the lawn in the massive, LED-flashing venue inside the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which began the first of two consecutive weekends on the grounds of the Empire Polo Club on Friday. "It's so much bigger than I expected," he said, a little wide-eyed behind his sunglasses. It was the Beverly Hills resident's first Coachella, and in many ways the festival that launched 15 years ago has been much bigger - and full of more rarified pleasures.

Care to supersize that ticket? Regal Entertainment is banking on it. The nation's largest theater chain is selling a "SuperTicket" for Sony's "The Amazing Spider-Man 2," which debuts in U.S. and Canadian theaters May 2. The cost is $20 above the regular movie ticket price and includes a high-definition digital copy of the film before it is released on DVD, as well as a digital copy of "The Amazing Spider-Man" on the streaming service Vudu....

Santa Anita Park said it plans to offer free weekend admission to its infield area starting April 26 and lasting through the end of its current meet June 29. The legendary horse-racing track in Arcadia also said it would offer free parking in the north parking lot at Gate 6, which provides access to the infield area. General admission currently costs $5, and parking is $4. During the promotion, fans can cross from the infield area to the grandstand area for $5. The moves are aimed at helping reverse a steady decline in attendance at Santa Anita (and many other tracks nationwide)

Amazon warehouse workers who hate their job and are eyeing the exit now have a lucrative payout offer. Online retail giant Amazon.com is offering its employees up to $5,000 if they quit, Chief Executive Jeffrey Bezos wrote in a letter to shareholders . Bezos spoke about a program offered to employees called "Pay to Quit" and credited Zappos, another online retailer known for its progressive human resources style, for the idea. The program is offered once a year to employees at its warehouses.

Faced with losing an ambitious $1-billion plan to revamp the Los Angeles River, Mayor Eric Garcetti on Friday raised the stakes by offering to split the cost with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The corps, which manages the river as a flood control channel, last year recommended a $453-million package of parks, bike paths and other enhancements to make the river more inviting to Angelenos. It recently informed the mayor's office that it was sticking with that plan rather than pursuing the $1-billion version, known as Alternative 20, that Garcetti backs.

Police on Thursday announced a $75,000 reward in the killing of a 28-year-old woman and her 1-year-old son, who died in a March 5 house fire that appeared to be intentionally set. Authorities responded to the fire about 11:30 a.m. in a converted garage in the 100 block of East 50th Street, said Los Angeles Police Det. Louie Calzadillas. Investigators found evidence that Gisella Yauli, 28, had been tied up in a bedroom. Yauli and her 1-year-old son, Dillan Reyes, died from smoke inhalation.

UCLA receiver Kenneth Walker cut across the field, leaving cornerback Adarius Pickett in his wake Thursday. He snagged a pass and cruised into the end zone. This was good medicine. Walker was concerned at times last fall, worrying about his future. He spent the season on the sideline after back surgery in June. “For a while, I was depressed,” he said. “I thought I was going to get lost in the shuffle. We only had one receiver leave. Everyone else was back and played.

People who want to buy locally grown food or who like artisan products probably know there are vendors all over the L.A. area, but the work of tracking them down is beyond most shoppers. The online store Good Eggs means to solve that problem. Its mission is bold: “Grow and sustain local food systems worldwide.” And shoppers can find more than 130 vendors who sell such foods as homemade gluten-free sandwich bread from Roses in the Kitchen ($10). Or dumplings from Bling Bling Dumpling in Hollywood, where the recipes come from the owners' Taiwanese grandmothers and their own modern tastes; cheeseburger dumplings, anyone?

NFL Players Assn. Executive Director DeMaurice Smith has spoken out in support of the ruling allowing Northwestern football players to unionize, saying it has nothing to do with college athletes looking for a paycheck. "In the more than 100 years since the NCAA was founded, it has not allowed athletes to have a seat at the table to discuss serious issues and therefore has done little to address full medical coverage for injuries sustained, limitations on practice time, scholarship shortfalls and rules to make promised education a reality," Smith wrote in an op-ed piece published Tuesday night by The Huffington Post.

With the help of electrodes placed near the spine, patients who had been paralyzed for more than two years were able to regain some voluntary control over their legs, according to a study released Tuesday. The electrodes stimulated the spinal cords of the patients while they engaged in specific motor tasks involving their paralyzed limbs. Before the patients were injured and their spinal cords were damaged, their brains would have sent those key electrical signals to their legs. The new study upends the assumption that two years post-accident is a point of no return for people paralyzed due to a spinal cord injury.